Social Networking Sites and Identity Theft Risk
Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are all the rage, but there is a huge identity theft risk with these sites. You need to use common sense when on them.
Drugs can be addicting, but they have nothing on social networking sites. If you get on Facebook or MySpace, you know what I mean. You can spend hours tracking down old friends and avoiding ex-boyfriends or girlfriends! While these sites are undoubtedly fun and addicting, there are some nefarious forces that use them to steal identities.
So, how does this happen? Well, let’s take a look at Facebook. You can be invited to join friends with a request by that friend. Well, what if you don’t know that person or it is a scam posting? Many are. I work on the web, so I tend to get scam emails first before most of the mainstream public. I’m already getting friend requests from bizarre names I’ve never heard of much less known in the past. I just delete them, but many people are blindly accepting the friend requests and providing information like their address, phone number, email address and so on. This is fuel for an identity theft scam!
A company called Sophus UK recently did a test to see how bad the situation was. It sent out 100 friend requests from two fictional characters based in Australia. A full 40 percent of people on the list accepted the invitation blindly. Of these, 100 percent revealed their email address, 89 percent handed over their full birth date and 74 percent provided workplace information. That is scary.
Social networking is a blast. I’ll be the first to admit I spend hours playing around on sites like Facebook each week. That being said, you should be very careful with your personal information. In this digital age, it can be used to steal your identity and create a host of problems for you.
Don’t be a sucker when you get “friend requests” from people you don’t know. Delete them!